My CIBD Story Part I

A couple of days ago I received a call that made me happily jump up and down in my office. It’s been the best news in over 4 years for me now and I couldn’t be more thankful for it!

I realized that I dropped a few statements about my health conditions every now and then but I never actually told you about where I come from and why I am where I am regarding my health, body and relationship with food and exercise 🙂

In the middle of January I told you I had to undergo a medical examination and that I had to prepare for it and so on. I’ll need to reach back a little that you can understand the full impact of this news. If you can’t handle a few juicy details I would recommend to stop reading here. As the story really is a mouthful I will divide it into two parts.

Part I – The Beginning

Please take your seats and fasten your seatbelts we’re about to take off for a little throwback…

I’ve always been a little picky with eating. In retrospective everything fits together but at the time being these were all just single puzzle pieces and little hints of me being a fussy eater or me being a bit “difficult”. Until the age of 3 I ate noting but mashed potatoes.In primary school I never ate the lunch my mum packed but let it untouched in my locker or threw it away. And I remember that when I went on vacation with family friends I ate almost nothing and dropped a size in the course of two weeks. Same happened on every single school trip. I wouldn’t eat for almost a week.

Most food just appalled me. For meat I only ate chicken. Almost no fruit besides strawberries and don’t even ask about veggies. I ate plain rice, plain potatoes, cereals and bread. Nothing else. I liked fuzzy soda and sweets and due to that I gained weight until I was an overweight 12-year-old girl. My mum tried to feed me better food but I just refused to eat it. It was crap food or no food so they gave in and it was crap food. Everyone in my family was a little overweight besides my sister. But she’d been a preemie and had always been a little different from the rest of us. But due to these genes it hadn’t been such a big deal that I was not super skinny.

Then things changed.

I remember the exact night when I first felt the impact of my illness. I was 12 years old and babysitting. I usually slept the night there as the mum came home so late from work. I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst stomach pain I had ever experienced and couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there curled up and prayed that it would go over. Eventually it did but it came back accompanied by the symptoms of a heavy gastro-enteritis. My mum was worried after a few days and took me to the doctor. He said it was the flu and I needed to rest and to re-hydrate. Nothing changed. We saw a holy lot of doctors within the next months but nobody could help.

I stopped eating when I knew I had to leave the house because I felt uncomfortable and uneasy when I had no access to a toilet. I still needed to go to school so I didn’t eat for most of the time. I dropped weight. I looked like a zombie. I fell asleep everywhere. I had no energy and my social life didn’t even start to develop. How can a 13-year-old girl explain the changing cloths she’s carrying around all the time? Or going to the bathroom 4 times an hour? You just don’t have to pee that much!

By the age of thirteen finally there was a doctor who recognized the symptom and sent me to a specialist who diagnosed me with Ulcerative Colitis which is a CIBD. It’s related with the better known Crohn’s disease. It’s an autoimmune disease which means my body fights itself by causing inflammations within the colon. I was diagnosed with Pancolitis which means involvement of the entire colon. People usually develop the symptoms between 25 and 45 years of age which made my diagnosis a process of almost a whole year!

I was treated with anti-inflammatory drugs and immunosuppression. Over a course of two more years I felt better and was a pretty normal girl. I tried to forget about my health condition. I was so happy that I was absolutely normal again. And I ate! I made up for the two years of not eating by eating everything in my reach. I gained weight. And it got more every year. I worried a little about my figure but more in the way of looks rather than health.

When I was 17 I met my boyfriend (now husband). He’s 30 cm taller than me and of course he ate a lot more than I did. We both liked to eat and had huge take-aways and when we cooked we cooked heavy meals with cream, cheese, carbs and fats. And we both gained more. In 2009 by the age of 24 I reached my highest weight. At that point I never stepped on the scale so even if I wanted to tell you about it I could only assume how much it was. Then things got worse….

Not good lady that you’ve had to deal with such an illness. I’ve had digestion issues before that lasted 2 years but I can only imagine how much worse it would be in terms of both pain and length of time.

I also put on weight when I met Nick too, similarly we both love food and love to eat so going out for dinners and takeways took its toll but on the plus side it sparked my love for exercise.

Thanks lovely 🙂
I think that happensto many girls. When the significant other eats portions that double yours you slowly adapt. Not good! We’re exercising sometimes together, too. It’s much more fun than when you’re alone.

Hello lovelies!
My name is Juli and I am stoked you stopped by. Have a seat, kick off your shoes, make yourself comfortable and have a cup of coffee with me! Let's chat and become friends! I am obsesses with 1000 things: Food, travelling, Harry Potter, crappy jokes, sarcasm, boozy drinks and ranting shamelessly about first world problems - just to name a few. Find out more by clicking on the image above

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